Local Search Association’s (LSA) 2014 “Local Media Tracking Study” conducted by Burke, Inc. found that on average, mobile phones/smartphones are used to search the internet – across search engines, internet yellow pages, ratings and review sites and daily deals – 42% of the time compared to just 34% in 2013.

This jump in mobile usage means it is time to reexamine your mobile strategy. I take a look at the latest data available to identify mobile trends and ten things to keep in mind that will help develop a winning mobile strategy for your business....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Columnist Wesley Young shares insights from the latest LSA Local Media Tracking Study, advising marketers on local-mobile strategy for 2015.

You’re walking along a busy sidewalk, dodging passersby, when a small group of people catches your eye. They’re standing in the middle of the path, heads tilted back in unison, staring at the sky.

You look, but you can’t see anything. Still, the crowd stares. You stand with them, searching for the source of their fixation. The crowd grows around you, and soon dozens of people are staring wordlessly into the sky.

Believe it or not, this is a real-life study conducted in 1969 by psychologist Stanley Milgram. A small group of people staring silently into an empty sky was influential enough to cause 80% of passersby to copy their actions, without any reason for doing so.

The Power of Social Proof

This is the power of social proof: our innate psychological tendency to use the wisdom of the crowd to influence our own decisions....

What I can do is help you make the most of the “free time” you do have. It’s not about cutting corners, it’s about cutting out the unnecessary and using tools to make your life more efficient.

Every day I have to get my news. That’s just a priority for me. Theoretically, I can watch the evening news each night at 7 as I elliptical until my heart’s content. Realistically, this happens maybe once a week – and that’s where these tools come into play.

Here are the tools that I use to get the news quickly, ranked from slightly-fluffy to professionally-specific:...

To learn how to use Snapchat for your business, I interview Gary Vaynerchuk and Shaun McBride. The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners…

Data is crucial. However, displaying a chunk of plain data can be monotonous. Infographics visualize plain data and make it visually more appealing. Data turned into infographic has a higher potential to go viral and be effective. While many of us are designers who can design amazing infographs, Infographic Generators can come in handy to Designers and non-designers alike. They can be a time saving resource. So here is a list of 17 fantastic Infographic Generators I compiled together:...

According to research based on an analysis of more than 100,000 e-commerce stores, 50.3% of the traffic in virtual shops are from mobile devices (being 40.3% from mobile phones and 10% from tablets) and only 49.7% from computers.

It may sound crazy, but the fact is that mobile commerce is already a reality. Also according to research, the Google search traffic comprised 18% of traffic from computers and only 12% for mobile phones.

These data seem to show that computers are being used for research products, while mobile devices for spontaneous purchases, which are instigated from Social Media, Email Marketing and SMS Marketing. The increase in purchases on mobile devices also brings another exciting trend, which we are calling “always buying”....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

The majority of online shopping is now coming from mobile. It's a powerful new force for retailers some càll "always buying."

A recent article from Harvard Business Review entitled “Marketing Is Dead, and Loyalty Killed It” states: “For most people, the word “marketing” summons up a single-minded focus on selling products – a one-sided endeavor.

But one-sided doesn’t work in a world where social media has given consumers a megaphone just as powerful as that of traditional marketers. Instead, there is loyalty, which requires communicating brand values that people want to be affiliated with.”...

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Taking a fresh look at social marketing and the importance of brand loyalty.

Traveling through this digital world we’ve built for ourselves is a dizzying experience. We see certain structures and terminology that we are accustomed to from the physical realm (words like “pages”) but in another sense, it forces us to think and make decisions in entirely new ways. There’s a new psychological journey to be learned and perfected.

Our construction of (and obsession with) social media sites like Facebook and Twitter reflect attempts to streamline and reconstruct our already established social interactions, but inevitably there’s something unique and new established as well.

For the purposes of this post, I’d like to take a look at how this concept applies to shopping. More specifically, how the process of online shopping has changed the psychological journey one takes on their way towards making a purchase. This is important because over the past few years especially, shopping online has become the preferred purchasing method for the typical American consumer....

Forrester Research said it best, “the forces of digital revolution have reached critical mass…the digital revolution threatens every incumbent firm in every industry.” The only cure for disruption is innovation and transformation. And yet, according to a recent study by Boston Consulting Group, 75% of business transformations fall short.v If ever it felt like being between a rock and a hard place, it’s now.

The irony is that one of the biggest causes of disruption, technology, is also one of the keys to transformation. The other big factor producing an almost constant state of disruption is the change in the way people engage with brands and interact with each other. The popular wisdom is that this is the fault of the millennial generation. They don’t act like their parents. Well, that’s been true of every generation.

But what is different this time is in concert with the advances of technology and the uncertainty of the economy, the age of sharing is replacing the age of coveting. Millennials don’t need to own their own car, they can rent a Zipcar. They’re quite happy subscribing to a service rather than outright being it....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

In a world of disruption, change is constant and shift is the watchword.

Content marketing is not a short and sweet strategy that you can start today and expect to reap the benefits tomorrow. It takes time to plan, execute, and measure. Once you’ve understood that, then content marketing becomes much easier. Let’s take a look at some questions you can use to create a content marketing framework for your B2B business that will help keep you in the content marketing race....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Here's a great place to start your content marketing strategy by asking and answering these 14 key questions.

The internet has radically changed the state of journalism, but content marketing is a relatively new field that can still benefit a lot from the practices of traditional reporters. In the interest of improving the field of content marketing overall, here are nine lessons from traditional journalism that every content marketer should know to better engage and build trust with readers....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Improve your content marketing with nine journalistic lessons to help you better engage and build trust with readers.

I recently came across a quote during one of my Pinterest-binges that lends itself really well to this situation:"Why settle for average when amazing is attainable?"

So while somewhere around 2% is often considered a healthy conversion rate, the businesses that are really going to stand out are the ones that refuse to settle. To help inspire your business to rise up, we've put together some tips aimed at turning a good conversion rate into a great conversion rate....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Useful tips aimed at turning a good conversion rate into a great conversion rate.

Since decades, it has been a powerful state-of-the-heart method of communication that strikes the right emotional balance. Instead of relying on a block of text, visual storytelling follows ‘show, don’t tell’ approach which results in greater engagement, traffic, and sales.

Check out these statistics:1. Photos and images are the most important element in optimizing social media posts.2. 93 percent of the most engaging Facebook posts include images 3. Videos on Facebook are shared 12 times more than text posts and links combined.

As a result, integrating story-depicting visuals into the content you post on Facebook will increase consumer interactions, even if your target audience are short on time....

There are unfortunately still many examples of businesses not getting it, viewing or outsourcing it as a mere “marketing” function, and operating in siloes where social becomes anti-social by design.

Without purpose and collaboration, social will always be just another thing that businesses use to defer the inevitable…change.

Even though the “cool” kids moved on, there’s a real need for businesses to become social…to become human. Our work is just beginning. Perhaps observing the gap between the expertise we have and the insight we need to make a difference is where we need to begin....

Creating a video animation for your business can be a bigger decision than you might first think. Brand videos are an ambitious venture because they condense everything that you want to say about your business into a short, visual format. It’s like putting your elevator pitch out there for everyone to see, so it has to be perfect.

In this blog, we’re going to talk you through the five most important things to consider when creating a video animation for your business....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Creating an animated video for your business need not be difficult if you follow these five basic tips.

Twitter is only the second social network to truly stick fast. It has evolved since its inception to house photographs and other media, and successfully monetised itself without driving loyal users away. Crucially it has remained free at the point of use.

We have reached the stage whereby companies must add ‘a Twitter feed’ to their increasing list of things to do, on top of the phone number, website, contact email and Facebook page.

This important background explains why certain brands and businesses have opted not to have a Twitter feed. To leap on every social media bandwagon could turn out to be a waste of time. However, given Twitter’s huge success relative to other platforms, it also shows prioritising Twitter is essential for brands if they are to successfully engage audiences....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Social media is very much an evolving phenomenon. New forms of communication and ways of making connections arise frequently in the digital space. Occasionally one of them sticks – think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

We can no longer think in terms of rifles vs. shotguns or push vs. pull. It’s not nodes that we need to target, but the networks. We can no longer coerce customers to do what we want, but must inspire them to want what we want.

Now that strategy is broken. Put up an attention grabbing TV campaign today and consumers won’t flock to the stores, but to the Internet. Their activity will leave a data trail, which your competitors will use to retarget your consumers with competing messages before a purchase event can occur.

In effect, the rise of digital marketing technology means that building awareness is no longer a sales driver, but a lead generation service for your competition. So marketers have started to look for another way....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

It really is time to rethink the traditional marketing model. It's broken and we need a fresh, new one.

By analyzing returns data, retailers can better understand consumers’ preferences and behaviors. Additionally, this data can help organizations survey their internal supply chain and warehousing proficiencies.

However, there is still plenty of work to be done as retailers strive to minimize return rates and maximize customer satisfaction, according to research from Voxware.

More than half (57%) of consumers are returning items they ordered online or by phone due to retailer error. While 42% noted that the product’s size or color was incorrect, another 15% said they received the wrong product altogether....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

research shows that retailers still have a long way to go in satisfying their customers.

If you want your prospects and customers to find the information that will truly help them (and in turn make them consider you to be a valuable resource), you need to be deliberate with how you structure and tag your content. Applying intelligent content principles will help us get there.

As Ann explains:It’s not just about the format. If we’re to truly make our content accessible to customers, it has to be discoverable. When you have unstructured, untagged, unintelligent content, the information you or your customer are looking for is very hard to find....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Intelligent content is our next generation according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Knowing tech innovations and implementing the ones that will help your business keeps you from growing out of touch with your customers needs. We know it can be difficult to track the biggest game-changers when it seems like there’s a new tool or product being released every day. We put together a list of 5 emerging trends that are likely to change how eCommerce businesses market their products in 2015....

Jeff Domansky's insight:

Keep your eCommerce marketing strategy up-to-date by keeping some of these 2015 marketing trends in mind.

News archive content refers to content older than 30 days. Although archive search is no longer available within Google News, you can use Google Web Search to find the content that you’re looking for.

Search for articles older than 30 days

To find news articles that are older than 30 days, go to www.google.com and type in your search term. For example, if you’re looking for information about the fall of the Berlin wall, just type in fall of the Berlin wall and start your search. The results you see won’t be restricted by publication date.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.